Mara Leichtman helped launch American University of Kuwait’s first celebration of World Anthropology Day with Professor Pellegrino Luciano (AUK), Kuwaiti anthropologist Professor Abdullah Alajmi (Arab Open University), and AUK’s Social and Behavioral Sciences Anthropology Club (February 16, 2017).
Mara Leichtman is currently conducting international research, having received three grants for her new project entitled, “Humanitarian Islam: Transnational Religion and Kuwaiti Development Projects in Africa.” Her fieldwork in Senegal (summer 2016) was funded by a West Africa Research Association Post-Doctoral Fellowship. She is spending the 2016-2017 academic year as a visiting Fulbright Scholar at American University of Kuwait, where she is offering two anthropology courses while launching the Kuwait-end of her research. Following her 10-month stay in Kuwait she will continue this multi-sited project in Tanzania and Senegal on a Council of American Overseas Research Centers Multi-Country Research Fellowship. Dr. Leichtman was also recently elected to the board of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion, a section of the American Anthropological Association.